SWITCH!

So in a fantastic twist of fate/good timing, Brittany ended up coming to visit me in Dublin this weekend! While I was in London last weekend we were talking about how a lot of my friends were going out of town to Scotland this weekend and I wasn't going with them. I could've gone if I really wanted to, but they planned the trip pretty last minute so the tickets were fairly expensive. Also, I'm honestly just really burned out on traveling. Although I've heard really good things about Edinburgh, the thought of waking up ridiculously early to get on a tiny congested airplane, being in a complete rush for 2 days, getting no sleep, spending way too much money, and coming home super late on a Sunday night before having work at 8:30 am on Monday kind of just sounds awful at this point. I've been doing these crazy whirlwind weekend trips for so long that I don't think I can take much more of it for a while. I'm so ready to just sit still for a while and enjoy being home. So I decided to stay in Dublin and when I explained the story to Brittany, she decided to come visit me! It was so awesome having her here and getting to show her around after her getting to show me around London. I was pretty bummed that no one had come to visit me in Madrid or Dublin yet, because when you live in a city and get to know it really well you want to be able to show people around and take them to the good sites and restaurants. That's the disadvantage of going abroad as a sophomore - most people go as a junior so they have friends abroad and they all visit each other. I'm hoping that I get to go back to Spain or Ireland with my family someday and show them all the stuff I did while I was there. But anyway, this was my first chance to really get to show a visitor around one of my cities and we had such a great time!

On Friday, I had my final exam for my history class in the afternoon. It knew that it was going to be easy, but I was still was relieved to get it over with. I spent the afternoon relaxing and hanging out with my friends who were leaving for Scotland until Brittany got in around 10:30. Since it was so late we just stayed in and tried to get a good night's rest. We talked about what she wanted to do and planned out our day, but we actually ended up being able to fit in a lot more than I initially expected. Dublin is a pretty small city and we were efficient to the max. We woke up around 8 the next morning, headed into the city, hit a coffee shop for breakfast and headed to Trinity to see the Book of Kells. I hadn't done this yet, so I was really glad that she wanted to because I was able to knock it off my list as well. The Book of Kells is an ancient Christian manuscript, created in the 8th century by Celtic monks. It's been housed at Trinity College since the 17th century. Unfortunately, they rob you of 9 euros (with a student discount) to see it, but it's one of those things you can't skip if you're in Ireland. The calligraphy and engravings are really beautiful and it was a cool thing to see.

Next, we headed over to Kilmainham Gaol (or jail, for those non-Celtic speakers). This is another tourist attraction that I hadn't gotten around to yet because it's a little outside the city center and you actually have to take a bus to get there instead of walking like everywhere else, so once again I was glad that her being there gave me an excuse to finally see it. Kilmainham Gaol was a functional prison from 1796-1924. It was closed in 1910, then reopened after the 1916 rising, and officially closed by the Irish Free State, following the Civil War, in 1924. It has been run as a museum since the 1980s. The reason that it's so famous in Ireland is because its has been home to many significant political prisoners such as Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1880s, and all the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising including Eamon de Valera. It is also where 14 of those leaders were executed. It's also just a general symbol of British oppression and the suffering of the Irish people - it reached its highest capacity during the Irish Potato Famine at the end of which 9,000 people were living in this jail (it only had 110 cells). The tour was really interesting and it was a little spooky to see the the cells with names of the people who I've been studying about branded over them. Brittany and I talked about how it's so weird to hear about the history from another perspective since, as Americans, we learn everything more from an Anglocentric stance.

After this, we went for something a little more lighthearted - a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. I had already done this when I got here in June, but I was happy to go with her again because it's another one of those things you have to do in Ireland. It's actually the number one visited tourist attraction in Ireland (natural sites excluded, that would be the Cliffs of Moher). We spent an hour or two there going through everything and enjoying the view from the gravity bar. This was about all we had allotted time for, but it was only about 2:30 when we finished up. Go us! We decided that we had time to do the Jameson Distillery as well - another must when visiting Dublin. I successfully navigated us across the Liffey for the 15 minute walk to the Distillery (I was so proud of myself), where we waited in line for our guided tour. Now last time I was there, I was disappointed because I didn't get selected to do the whiskey tasting at the end of the tour. I was with a group of 4 other girls, and he only chose one of us to do it (I lost to a redhead - I can't compete with that in Ireland). This time however, I made sure to be extra obnoxious to guarantee my place in the testing, and I was successful. So after the tour, not only did I get to have my included Jameson cocktail, I also go to do a tasting of Irish Jameson, American Jack Daniel's, and Scottish Johnny Walker Black Label, with the guide explaining the differences and guiding us through the tasting. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jameson is the best. I saved some so Brittany could try, and she agreed.

Following that lovely "cultural" experience, we knew that most things would be closing down, but I figured I could walk her by Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals. We actually got to go in Christ Church and walk around for a little. Then, we did a walk through St. Stephen's Green and Merrion square to see the Georgian doors, up Grafton Street, back by Trinity and onto O'Connell where I proceeded to wow her with my knowledge of Irish History explaining all the monuments and historical buildings. Go me. By then, we were completely starving so we headed to the Church restaurant, which I wrote about in my first post about Ireland. It's a really cool setting and good demonstration of Irish food so I figured it was a good place to take her since she only had one dinner in Dublin. She then ordered the Spaghetti Bolognese, so the whole Irish food thing didn't really matter, but at least I tried.

After this, it was (almost) acceptable pub going time, so I took her over to Temple Bar. I've been gone most weekend so I haven't gotten to fully explore the Dublin night life, but you really can't deny that Temple Bar is a good time. Yes, it's overrun with tourists and way too expensive, but it has an amazing live music and there's always big crowds so you usually end up with some good stories. First, we went to Peadar Kearney's on Dame street. I had been there my first weekend on a Pub Crawl and seen Brian Brody, who is an amazing live performer. He performs around Dublin, but he's always at this pub on Saturdays and I had been wanting to go back and see him. He does a mix of Irish folk music and American contemporary stuff so for Americans, it's a good mix of stuff we don't know but also stuff that we do so he doesn't lose you. Brittany, like me, isn't exactly a go off the handle nuts while you're going out kind of girl, and she said that it was one of the best places she'd been all summer and that she wished the pubs in London had live music like that. Score one for Dublin. Next, we headed down to Essex Street and went to Fitzsimon's Hotel, which also had live music. We just caught the tail-end of this guy's performance when someone in the middle of the crowd decided it would be a good idea to throw beer everywhere. Literally. So, we both got completely splattered and decided to pack it in early, in desperate need of showers. Despite how the night ended, I think that she had a really good time and got a good feel for the Dublin night life.

The next day, her flight left at 1:45, so we really didn't have much time. We debated going into the city for breakfast, but decided to just hang out on DCU campus and not be in a rush. I put her in a cab around noon, and spent the rest of my day working on the papers that I have due this week. I'm so glad that I finally had a friend come visit me while abroad and that I got to show her around. It was a lot of fun. No pictures this time, because I really didn't take very many. Maybe once Brittany posts hers I'll add some later on.

A Weekend in Dreary Old London

London was in fact, pretty dreary. I guess I just got the luck of the draw (or bad luck really) because it rained the ENTIRE time I was there. You'd think that I should be used to it by now, seeing as how I've been living in Ireland, but it was certainly a damper (no pun intended) on the weekend. It makes it hard to enjoy things when there's a torrential downpour going on. Regardless of the weather though, I did really enjoy London. I went to visit my friend Brittany who is studying there for the summer and it was so great to see her, since I haven't since December. I got to stay with her in her apartment, which is a BU owned building and is in a great location, and we managed to do a lot of what London has to offer in just 2 days. Not to mention it was Harry Potter premiere weekend, making it all the more exciting.

I arrived in London around 6:30 on Friday night after having my flight delayed, as per usual. This caused me to miss the bus I had booked from Gatwick airport, which is about 30 miles south of Central London, so I was a little behind schedule and little more than irritated. I don't know why, but I seriously have a curse about flights. Something always goes wrong. All in all, it wasn't too bad though and Brittany met me at the bus station around 8:30. We immediately headed to this crepe place by her apartment that she raved about, and it was worth the hype. I had a pesto crepe for dinner and we shared a strawberry creme crepe (with nutella on the side) for dessert. Amazing. After that, we headed back to the Crofton (BU's building) and we stayed up pretty late doing some much needed catching up and bonding. Even though we talk regularly, there's always stuff to catch up on when you haven't seen each other in 7 months. Seeing her just made me that much more excited to be back in Boston next semester.

We woke up the next morning around 9 (should've been earlier, but we stayed up until about 2:30 talking), and headed out for my first day seeing the city. Out plan was to go to the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, but the weather had other ideas. After pushing through the crowd and finding a good palce to watch from, some policemen came around announcing that the ceremony was cancelled due to the weather. Um, excuse me? How on earth are they cancelling things due to rain in a country where it rains almost every day? In Arizona, I would expect something like that. Not in the United Kingdom. So that was disappointing, but at least I got to see the palace and St. James Park and take my touristy photos

Next, we headed to the Tower of London. The Tower of London is a castle and fortress on the River Thames; the original tower was built in 1078 by William the Conqueror. At first, it was primarily used a royal residence up until the Tudors emerged in the 15th century. Under Henry VII and Henry VIII it became more of a prison, with many famous political prisoners living there including Anne Boleyn, Sir Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and Catherine Howard(these are jsut the ones that crazy Henry VIII executed). Elizabeth I was even imprisoned there by her sister, Queen Mary I, due to her Protestant beliefs before she ascended to the throne. Anne Boleyn is also buried in the chapel there. My Tudor obsession was seriously having field day. The Tower also used to be home to the Royal Menagerie, which was a pretty big deal. The British monarchy would get exotic animals as gifts from random countries all the time - lions, tigers, bears, ostriches, monkeys - you name it.

Also housed at the Tower of London is the crown jewels, which is pretty self-explanatory. It was a really cool thing to be able to see them, but it also kind of just enraged me because all I could think about was "if you just hocked one of these, you could feed the entire continent of Africa for a decade." It's interesting to see how important the royalty is to British society though - it's such a huge part of their national tradition and I think it's hard for Americans to relate to that since we live in a society that has much stronger egalitarian roots. There's also a museum with all the royal armor throughout the centuries in the tower complex.

We spent a few hours walking around the Tower and seeing everything. Unfortunately, it was raining so they weren't doing the official guided tours, which are supposed to be really funny and informative. Either way, it was a cool thing to see.

Next, we headed to the Parliament and Big Ben area. Seeing these things was so cool - they are such iconic images, so it feels surreal to be seeing them in real life. I've been a lot of places over the past 6 months, but I think that London and Rome (and Paris, but I was there over a year ago so I'm excluding it) are definitely the 2 cities with the most well-known images that I've been to in my travels this semester. It's so amazing to see them in real life. And to think about how that Parliament building was the center of civilization for centuries. So cool.

By this time, we were starving, and so we went in search of this Indian Restaurant that had been recommended to us. I really wanted to get Indian food while I was there, because I know that it's supposed to be good. I was surprised to see that Brittany was up for it, because she's usually a picky eater so I was very impressed with her adventurousness. It took us a while to find the restaurant, but after walking by Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, we finally did and it was well worth the confusion and time spent searching for it. We split some cheesy naan (basically just cheesy bread), paneer tikka (cheese and peppers roasted with this yummy orange sauce) and then I had this awesome spicy lamb kebab and a cup of chai tea. It was all soooo good. I love Indian food.

After lunch, we headed back to the Thames to go on the London Eye. I debated about whether or not to actually go on the giant Ferris wheel overlooking the Thames, because it's pretty expensive (as is everything in London) and I didn't know how cool it would really be, but I decided to just go for it- it's part of the experience. Unfortunately, it was still raining but I was happy with it. The views are really nice and it's just a cool thing to be able to say you've done. If you're ever in London though, I'd probably say skip it - it's way overpriced and it takes a long time so there's better things you could be doing.

By now it was around 5:00 and we had important things to do that night: see Harry Potter. Brittany had already seen it on the night it premiered, but she was more than happy to see it with me again. Seeing the last Harry Potter move in London, on the weekend it premiered, was definitely a cool experience. I thought that the movie was very well done and it stayed true to the book, unlike some of the past movies, which was great. It such a weird thing to think that the series that pretty much defined my generation's childhood is now over. After the movie, we headed back to the Crofton to get some sleep.

The next morning we let ourselves sleep in until around 9 again and then we headed to the British Museum. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This place is ENORMOUS. You could literally spend weeks in there and still not see everything. It has over 7 million artifacts, just to give you an idea. After going into the 1st room, I was so overwhelmed. We went through most of the Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt stuff and then a lot of the European stuff as well. I saw the Rosetta Stone and the parts of the Parthenon, which is a lot, that are there. It was seriously tiring though. After spending about 2 hours there, I decided I was all museumed out. Fortunately, this museum is free so you could theoretically go back as many times as you want which is definitely necessary. There's a lot to catalog in all of human history and the British museum covers a lot of it.

Next, we headed over the Kensington Palace in Hyde Park to have a truly British cultural experience: High Tea. Kensington Palace was built in the 17th century and is used as a Royal Residence. It was the official residence of Princess Diana from 1981 until her death. After being renovated, it will serve as the London Residence of Prince William and Kate Middleton (no idea what her official title is now), because I guess it's not big enough for them now. We had tea at the Orangery, which was added in 1704 for Queen Anne and is now a restaurant open to the public. Brittany and I both got chocolate tea and an assortment of pastries and finger sandwiches which were all quite tasty. I really enjoyed the chocolate tea as well. It was a cool experience and Brittany hadn't even done it yet even though she's been there for 2 months so she was glad I made her go.

After this, sadly, my time was almost up. After waiting under the awning outside the Orangery for the torrential downpour to stop, we went back to Crofton for a while a had a much needed skype date with our friend Meredith, who is home in Houston for the summer. Then I headed to the airport, with my flight leaving out of Heathrow this time so it wasn't quite as far of a journey. I had to take a train instead of the underground because parts of it are closed for renovation in preparation for the Olympics next summer. To come full circle here, my flight back to Dublin was delayed by an hour and half. Seriously, I have a curse. I did eventually get back to Dublin around 11 pm though.

I really enjoyed London and I didn't even get to do the half of what it has to offer. You could easily spend a week there as a tourist. It was also interesting to see everything after having learned a lot of Britain through the perspective of the Irish, but I don't hold it against them. We're all friends now, right? Here are some photos:

The one and only, Buckingham Palace


Posing in front of our future house


Tower Bridge


The Tower of London


Parliament and Big Ben


Trafalgar Square


I had to.


The London Eye


The River Thames and Big Ben


The British Museum


The Orangery at Kensington Palace


Prim and proper at High Tea


Yummy yummy pastries


Kensington Garden

How long, how long must we sing this song?: Northern Ireland

This past weekend was yet another full of travels and adventure. This time, we headed north and crossed the border into the United Kingdom to visit Northern Ireland. I'm going to start this blog off with a little history lesson, because I know that the whole Republic of Ireland vs. Northern Ireland, U.K. involvement can get a little fuzzy sometimes.

So basically, what went down is that during Britain's 700 year occupation of the island, the northern portion of the country grew to have a much higher concentration of Protestants. Currently, 85% of the Republic identifies as Catholic, while in Northern Ireland, it's only about 40%. The reasons that this happened are kind of up for debate, but mostly it was just because the North was more easily controlled by Britain and their military campaigns were more successful in that portion of the country, while the South was more exposed to external interference from Catholic countries like France or Spain. This meant that the penal laws and other forms of Catholic oppression had more effect in the North, so the Protestants flourished there. As a result, the North became a political stronghold and much of the wealth from Britain came into that part of the country. The North became much more economically developed than the rest of the island and Belfast became the only truly industrialized city, while the rest of the country had an agrarian economy.

Fast forward a couple hundred years, and in the early 20th century you have the Irish really starting to push for independence. With the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, Britain agreed to grant 26 counties dominion status, but they refused to give up 6 counties in the province of Ulster - Fermanagh, Tyrone, Derry (Londonderry, depending on who you're talking to), Antrim, Armagh and Down. This condition of the treaty was a major point of contention for many Republicans, and resulted in a split in the IRA which led to the bloody civil war in the Republic that would carry on for 2 years after the treaty. Eventually, the pro-treaty group won out, and the 6 counties were never integrated back into the Republic as most Irish people had originally wanted. The truth of the matter is that these areas had a Protestants majority and a vote never would have resulted in them joining the republic voluntarily. There was, however, still a significant Catholic population so clearly they were going to have problems.

Enter: The Troubles. I'm sure that mostly everyone has at least some idea of what the troubles were all about. Basically, under British rule in Northern Ireland, Catholics continued to be discriminated against and so eventually, led by the IRA, they started to fight for Civil Rights. This led to a lot of violence throughout the 60's and 70's and the famous 1972 Bloody Sunday Massacre that U2 wrote a song about. Britain took Northern Ireland's parliament away and brought a lot of British troops in to try and control the violence. It wasn't until the 1980s that the Peace Process began to make way, culminating in the Good Friday agreement of 1998. This continued throughout the 2000's, as the IRA decommissioned its weapons and the power-sharing agreement was brought back. That was a massively generalizing summary, but hopefully we get the gist now. Although the situation is currently much more stable, our tour guide explained to us that Belfast and Derry really are still "war-zones" and you have to be careful what you say and who you're saying it to. And once you get there, you can tell that he's not exaggerating.

We arrived in Belfast around 5:00 on Friday night. It's actually only about a 2 hour drive from Dublin. We were meeting up with our tour guide, who we would later find out is ex-IRA (as are most of the cab drivers in Belfast, since it's the only job they can get, apparently), in the city center where he would join us on our bus to show us around. I had no idea what to expect, but once you arrive in Belfast you can just sense the grimness. Maybe this is just because I know about the history, or maybe it's just the general lack of sunlight, but the place seriously feels like it has a shadow cast over it. As we drove around and George explained things, I was shocked to see that the city truly is still divided between Protestants and Catholics. We saw murals in both areas of the cities - the ones in the Protestants neighborhoods sported portrayals of Oliver Cromwell and King William of Orange, while those in the Catholic neighborhoods showed IRA Remembrance Monuments and Bobby Sands. Each area has its own schools, churches (obviously), community centers and whatever other type of building you would expect. Catholic neighborhoods fly the Republic's flag while Protestant neighborhoods fly the Union Jack. The 2 areas are literally divided by a wall which they now call a "Peace Wall" and a gate which stays closed throughout the weekend. They had a vote a few years ago to see if the citizens wanted to tear down the wall, but they voted to keep it up. The city has been making a lot of strides in becoming more integrated, but the fact that there's segregation if painfully obvious.

One particularly interesting thing to witness was the build up for July 12th. I don't know what our trip planner was thinking when she scheduled this trip for July 8-10, because every year there is violence and rioting leading up to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when the Protestant William of Orange took back Ireland from Catholic James. For a few weeks beforehand we were worried that we wouldn't be able to see Belfast because of the rioting, but fortunately it died down before we went. We certainly had to take our precautions though - we only left the bus for a few minutes at a time to take pictures and there were a few areas where the tour guide wouldn't less us get off. They're not really concerned with tourists though; this a local battle. We saw people on the Protestants side preparing enormous bonfire pits to be burned through the night on July 11th. It's amazing how prevalent the sectarianism still is.

Driving around Belfast and seeing the city was a really great opportunity. Especially since I've been learning about the history, seeing the situation for myself was really interesting. Belfast is not, however, somewhere I would ever go just for pleasure reasons. It's mostly just industrial and it really doesn't feel safe. I was glad to get out of there and head further north to the Antrim Coast.

We stayed both nights in the small town of Ballintoy on the Antrim coast, and it was, like the rest of Ireland, incredibly beautiful. In fact, the coastal drive is considered to be one of the most beautiful motorways in the world. This area also houses many of the famous sites that Northern Ireland boasts including the Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, all of which I would be seeing the next day. Like most of the towns we stayed in on other trips, this one was small and quiet, but we were a smaller group this time (23 people) so it was MUCH more enjoyable. We went into a pub and we weren't the only people in the pub. The couple who owned our hostel also owned pretty much everything in the town and they showed us a great time and cooked us a fabulous dinner for only 5.50 pounds (I'm ignoring the fact that this is about $10; I can't even talk about exchange rates anymore). Note: Throughout my pub going in Ireland, I've come to the conclusion that Jameson is hands-down the best mainstream whiskey out there.

The next morning we woke up and headed for Derry. Derry is one of Europe's best examples of a walled city, and it is famous for the siege of 1689. This seige took place before the Battle of the Boyne and was carried out by Protestants attempting to protect that city from Catholic James' rule. This event became an icon of Protestant culture and is commemorated annually by the Apprentice Boys of Derry, which has fueled further sectarianism and violence in the area. One of these commemoration parades directly led to the event that is considered to have started the troubles: the Battle of the Bogside in in 1969. The Bogside refers to the area in which Catholics lived, which was basically a slum and was outside the city walls, despite the fact that 60% of Derry's population was Catholic. Riots broke out in response to the Apprentice Boys marching on the wall and the battle raged on for 3 days, sparking violene in other areas of Northern Ireland as well. Eventually, the British Army had to be called in to quell the violence, marking the first direct intervention of the London government since the partition in 1921. Violence continued throughout the 1970's, including the famous Bloody Sunday Massacre in 1972 in which 13 unarmed protestors were killed by British troops. All in all, it is estimated that around 300 people were killed in Derry alone during the Troubles.

We walked around the city, along the walls and into the Bogside. We saw the political murals, the H-block memorial, the Free Derry sign and the Bloody Sunday Memorial. Another interesting thing to note is that the official name of Derry is actually Londonderry, the London having been added by the British government in 1613. All the street signs read Londonderry, but if you're heard saying that in the wrong part of the city I would imagine that you can get yourself into trouble. Although not quite as grim as Belfast, Derry certainly has a depressed feel to it as well.

Seeing all of this was a bit surreal. I knew so little about it before coming to Ireland, that it's weird to think that the Peace Process didn't even really take effect until my lifetime. For me, it's really strange to think that this kind of sectarian, religious conflict is taking place is a modern, developed, western country. But being there, I was able to see that it's very real. By the Good Friday agreement of 1998, approximately 3,500 people had been killed in the Troubles. This may seem like a somewhat small number, but think of it like this: 3,500 people is is about .2% of the Northern Ireland population. This would be like 650,000 Americans dying due to sectarian violence. Clearly, these events had a huge effect on Northern Ireland's culture and most individuals were affected by it in some way or another. Thinking about and seeing all of this was very heavy and I was happy to leave Derry and be out of the city for a while. We really got out just in time too - violence broke out in Derry on Monday with petrol bombs and bricks being thrown at police.

We ate lunch at a pub in Derry (steak and Guinness pie - awesome) and then we headed back along the Antrim coast to visit the Giant's Causeway. First, we stopped for a photo op at Dunluce Castle - supposedly Ireland's most romantic castle. The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 basalt columns which were created as the result of a volcanic eruption, some 50 to 60 million years ago. Or at least that's what all you boring people can believe. The real story is that the Irish warrior/giant Finn McCool built the causeway across the channel to Scotland so that he could fight his Scottish rival, Benandonner. However, upon learning that Benandonner was much larger than he was, he chickened out. Benandonner crossed the Causeway to track him down and Finn had his wife hide him under a blanket and pretend that he was their child. When Benandonner came looking for him, he saw the alleged "baby" and became terrified that if the baby was that large, Finn himself must be gargantuan. He fled back to Scotland, tearing the causeway up on his way so that Finn could not follow him. This is clearly much more realistic than that whole volcano theory.

Believe what you want, but either way the Causeway is beautiful. Most of the columns are hexagonal, but some are different. There's also various formations making chimney stacks, an organ, and even the Giant's boot. Climbing around and exploring was a lot of fun and fortunately we had pretty good weather all weekend.

Next, we were headed for another major Northern Ireland tourist attraction: the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. The Bridge links the mainland from nearly Ballintoy to the tiny island of Carrick. It was built by Salmon fisherman over 350 years, and although only 20 meters long, it will certainly give you a rush of adrenaline while crossing, especially if you're afraid of heights (it's about 90 feet above the ocean). Once on the island, you have amazing views of Rathlin Island and Scotland, which is only about 12 miles away.

That night, we decided to splurge a little on dinner and actually go out to a restaurant in town. I had some amazing salmon and delicious chocolate cake among a lot of other food in between that I don't really care to list here. My diet starts...soon. It was totally worth it though...it's not like I'm going to change those pounds back to euros. Especially now that the euro dropped FINALLY. It hit 1.39 the other day, which is the lowest it's been since March. It was 1.33 when I left for Spain in January. It kills me to think about how much money I've lost just because of the exchange rate. Thank goodness for the financially inept leaders of the EU (cough cough Greece), otherwise I wouldn't have had any reprieve. I seriously went on bank run that day it dropped and I hopefully won't have to go again before I come home in 16 days. So apparently I lied earlier and I can actually talk about exchange rates more, but I'll end this rant here.

Sunday was a pretty slow day. We'd already done all of our stuff in Northern Ireland, so we headed back into the Republic. Thanks to some planning errors, lack of organization and more bus malfunctions, we were incredibly behind schedule, but we got to see everything on the scheudle and still made it back to DCU by 7, so it wasn't too bad. First, we went to Slane Castle. This Castle is in County Meath and is actually still a private residence for Lord Henry Cunyngham. However, he opens it up for concerts pretty frequently and a lot of famous bands have performed there incluing U2, the Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kings of Leon, the Killers, Oasis, R.E.M., Bruce Springstein, Guns n' Roses and many others. Unfortunately, we didn't actually get to go inside the gates because we were late (thank you obnoxious people who decided we had to go to Bushmills just to find out that the distillery was CLOSED; besides, who wants Bushmills when you can drink Jameson?), but we got some good pictures at least. We also went to Monasterboice (monastery) in County Louth to see Ireland's highest high cross: Muiredach's High Cross. Finally, we stopped off at St. Peter's Church in Drogheda to see the head of St. Oliver Plunkett. Yep, that's not a joke. He was the last Catholic martyr to die in Ireland, being executed by the British government in 1681. His head was preserved in Rome and after being beatified in 1920, it was moved to St. Peter's Church. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty weird and creepy.

So that was pretty much my weekend. It was a really great trip and I'm glad I got the opportunity to see a lot of what I had been learning about first hand. Next weekend I'll be going to London, so stay tuned. Here are some pictures:

William of Orange Mural in Protestants Belfast


Oliver Cromwell


The machine gun follows you everywhere...serioulsy


Community Building "peace" mural


Peace wall


Now we're on the Catholic side...IRA Memorial


Sinn Fein headquarters


Bobby Sands


Commemorating the Hunger Strikes during which 10 people (including Bobby Sands) died after Margaret Thatcher revoked their rights as political prisoners


More Murals


Belfast Black Cab


The North Antrim Coast in Ballintoy


The Walled City of Derry


Preparing for the Bonfires


Peace bridge


The Bogside


Free Derry Corner


A petrol bomber in the 1969 Battle of the Bogside


Bernadette Devlin - political activist and Member of Westminster Parliament from 1969-1974.


H-Block Memorial


Bloody Sunday Memorial


Sharing a romantic moment at Dunluce Castle


Giant's Causeway


Straight Chillin'


40,000 of these


The organ


The Boot


Pretty impressive


Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge


Don't I look terrified?


Gorgeous


I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.


Ballintoy at sunset


Slane Castle

Life in General

My weekend travel escapades aside, life in Dublin is going very well. I've been extremely busy. Much busier than I was in Madrid. I like to think of this as my slow easing back into the American lifestyle. Spain is much more relaxed than the U.S., and Dublin is somewhere in between. But never having worked a full-time job, this internship has been a great opportunity.

My daily routine consists of something like this: my alarm goes off around 6:30, and hopefully I drag myself out of bed by 7. That whole teenage inability to wake up early in the morning still hasn't worn off yet. Thank God my roommate wears earplugs otherwise my snoozing would drive her nuts. I leave my apartment to get on the bus around 7:30 and the bus ride is about a half hour, depending on traffic. The two other interns and I usually get to work about 10-15 minutes before anyone else, so we make coffee, clean up the office if needed and start work on the morning meetings. I actually really enjoy doing the morning meetings. We have access to some of the best databases in the world from UBS so I get to read a lot of interesting research and news articles in the process.

The working day consists of a variety of tasks, depending on what I'm working on at the moment. Some of it is trivial administrative work, but I've also had some stuff that's been really interesting. I've worked on rewriting/reformatting the business plan, helping arrange presentations for clients about their asset allocation, organizing a weekly newsletter with important financial happenings for our clients and setting up a client information database. I think the best part of the whole thing is that I work right alongside the CEO and Managing Director, who both worked at Merrill Lynch for over 20 years before they founded Kinsale. This whole thing has been a really great networking opportunity. I take lunch around 1 everyday with the other interns and we usually go to this AMAZING sandwich place nearby. On Thursdays, there's an international market with stands of every kind of cuisine imaginable. Looking forward to good food always makes the morning a little easier.

I get off work at 5 and head back to DCU on the bus. Unfortunately, DCU is a little bit outside the city so it's a bit of a commute (especially with traffic), but I'm usually home by 6. I detest the Dublin bus system. After being spoiled by the Madrid metro system, I get really frustrated with the unreliability of the buses and the indirectness of the routes. But I think that it's another interesting experience in living in a city. When I get home, I'm usually pretty much exhausted. I've been trying to exercise regularly, so I'll either go to spinning class or just take a run in the park at least a couple days a week. Then I typically have some kind of paper or reading to be doing, I make myself dinner, and I try to be in bed by midnight at the latest. On Wednesdays, I have class in the evenings from 6:30-9 which is AWFUL. Our professor is very understanding of how tired we are so she takes it easy on us, but it's still not pleasant. On Fridays we have the day off of the internships, but we have class from 10-1, so the day's not totally free. At least we get to sleep in a little bit though.

This is probably the most regular routine I've had since high school. During the semester at BU, my schedule is always erratic because classes start and end at a different time everyday. Some evenings I have volleyball practice, sorority chapters, other club meetings, or some social event. Then weekends are always crazy, busy, and ever changing. Even in Spain, I had class at noon two days a week and my internship at 9 two days a week, so my schedule was changing everyday. I have a whole new found appreciation for waking up early every morning and working all day. It's exhausting. However, my internship has been a great learning experience thus far so I have very little to complain about.

My class is going pretty well too. The professor is very laid back and relaxed, so the class isn't run quite as rigidly as I would prefer. We go off on a lot of tangents and fail to finish lectures and she's really bad about getting back to you about stuff. The longer I'm here, I find more and more things which are similar to Spain as opposed to the U.S. For example, we have that was supposed to be due on Wednesday July 6th. It said on the syllabus we would get the topics for the paper on June 15th. She then told us she would give us the topics on June 22th. She didn't actually give us the topics until June 19, giving us a week to write the essay and then she begrudgingly gave us an extra 2 days, until this Friday, to turn them in, even though she was completely at fault for not giving us the essay topics. This kind of disorganization is chronic here, and I find it to be much less common in the U.S.

It's interesting to see how other students who haven't been abroad before react to things like this or similar occurences in their internship. I guess I'm kind of used to it by now, and it's so much more mild here than in Spain that it doesn't bother me as much. A lot of people are getting driven nuts by it though. One of my friends was telling a story about how her boss was really stressed out and explaining to her all the thing that had to be done by the end of the day, so she said something like "ok, let's get started" and her boss goes "Well we need to have a tea break first!" Typical. Another story: one of my friend's had been sick for a few days so she went to the doctor. She came into the office, didn't have to fill out any paperwork, the doctor didn't even ask her any questions other than to describe her symptoms and then prescribed her penicillin without asking if she was allergic to any drugs (she wasn't, fortunately). One more story. A group of Italian high school students just moved in to the dorm we're living in. That's great enough as it is, but it gets better. DCU housing decided that it would be a great idea to give 100 foreign teenagers, I kid you not, MASTER KEYS. We had 15 year olds running down the hallway of our suite yelling in Italian. I'm not making this up. When we complained and explained how this was a problem, they just said that "they'd never had problems before." Unbelievable. This kind of stuff just does not happen in the U.S. The cultures are fairly similar though. I haven't encountered nearly as many frustrations here as I did in Spain.

That being said, I can't really imagine myself every living here either. A big part of that is the weather. I need sunshine. It is beautiful and Dublin is a great city, but there's no long-term potential in my opinion. Having been away for so long is starting to wear on me. The combination of seeing friends from home who I hadn't seen in a very long time last weekend, followed by the 4th of July kind of hit me with a homesickness double-whammy. I'm going to make the most of my remaining time here, by enjoying Dublin and going on two more trips - one to Northern Ireland and one to London, but I'm definitely looking forward to being back in the good old U.S. of A.

A Brief Stint in the Netherlands

Ok so, I debated with myself tirelessly over whether or not to actually write this blog, because I know the minute that I say I went to Amsterdam, you're all going to make assumptions about how that weekend unfolded. I, however, am writing this in defense of Holland's capital city. Despite it's seamy reputation, there's actually a lot more to it than what stereotypes assume and I really enjoyed seeing it.

The reason I decided to go to Amsterdam is because some friends and I were trying to coordinate a place to meet up and it was pretty central for all of it. One of my friends from BU, Jessica, is studying in Paris right now, and her twin brother, Zach, who goes to UT Austin, is studying in Prague. They got in on Thursday night with 2 of Zach's friends from Prague and I met up with them on Friday evening, since I had to wait until after my classes were over to fly in.

Our hotel (yes an actual hotel!) was located in a nice location, but it's pretty far from the central train station. Zach met me at the train station and we walked through the city to get to there. It's near Vondel Park and the museum district. I was really surprised to see that the city is actually really beautiful and green. The canals are really awesome and it's a lot of fun to walk around in. Upon reaching the hotel, it was already around 10:00 (circular canals make for a city that's really easy to get lost in, thanks a lot Zach) and we headed out to grab some dinner since the group had been waiting for us.

We had some positively mediocre (but only 5 euro) pizza, and then headed down to the infamous red-light district. So for those of you who haven't been living under a rock, you know that prostitution is legal in Amsterdam. The government regulates the industry to ensure good "working conditions" and the girls are required to get tested every other month. Although my inner free-marketeer sees the efficiency of this policy, walking down a street with a bunch of women dressed in lingerie, tapping on windows and being gawked at like circus animals was a very unsettling experience. It felt awkward, uncomfortable, and perverse, to say the least. This part of the city is obviously very seamy, and pretty much everyone around you is under the influence of something or other. We headed into a pub to hang out for a while where 2 of the guys in our group proceeded to get in a very uncomfortable altercation with an angry Irish man (ironic) over who got use of the pool table next. Jess, Zach and I were all exhausted so we decided to let them fend for themselves and head back to the hotel. We had a hilarious encounter with a Scottish man on the way back who thought that Zach was some German person who he knew and then we proceeded to talk about how said Scottish man hates rats for about 10 minutes...oh interesting experiences abroad.

The next morning, we woke up and headed for the Van Gogh museum, which was conveniently about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. We sat in the little park in front of the I amsterdam sign and enjoyed some delicious dutch apple "pastry" (really it's cake, but this was breakfast so I'm calling it pastry). Dutch food is surprisingly delicious. So, the van Gogh museum. Van Gogh has always been one of my favorite artists since I knew what art was, so I was thrilled to go and see some of his most famous works like the "Sunflowers" (you know the one).

After this, our goal was to find a boat to give us a canal tour, but we got a little sidetracked by delicious dutch pancakes. Everyone seriously has to go to Amsterdam just to try these at some point in their lives. Zach and I shared one that had apples, which we put a little bit of powdered sugar and syrup on. Delicious. Then we got one that was goat cheese, spinach, pine nuts and garlic oil. AMAZING. Seriously one of the best things I've eaten in my life. I know I say that about everything, but it was awesome.

Next, to continue the food fest, we stopped into a couple cheese shops which have the most amazing types of cheese just sitting around, waiting to be sampled. Pesto cheese. Goat's cheese. Sheep's cheese. Garlic herb cheese. Cheese overload. I was seriously in heaven. Ultimately, we were unsuccessful in finding a boat to take us on a canal tour. We wanted a smaller boat so it would be just us, but most things left from Central Station which was far away and we just kept getting distracted by other sites. It was really fun to just walk around the city and enjoy the atmosphere though.

Later that evening, we headed over to the Anne Frank house for some more cultural activities. It was really interesting to see the annex that she and her family actually lived in. Interesting/creepy. The original diary is also usually there, but they had a stand in while we were there because the original was out for preservation. Sad. We had to wait in line for a really long time to get in, so it pretty much killed the rest of the day, but it's one of those Amsterdam must-do activities. After this, we headed back to the area near our hotel to get some dinner and hang out for a bit.

The next day, I didn't have time to do much. Thanks to prohibitive costs and planning convenience, I was flying back to Dublin via Brussels. Jess was headed back to Paris on a bus through Brussels, and the rest of the group was headed to Brussels and Bruges for a couple days because they had a long weekend. It was also SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper for me to fly out of Brussels, so I just decided to travel down with them and get a couple hours there to see some stuff. In the morning in Amsterdam, we got some delicious bagels for breakast and headed over to the I amsterdam sign for some token tourist photos. We had to get on the bus at 12:30, so we didn't have time for much beyond that. In Brussels, I had a couple of hours to walk around, but didn't really see much. I'm not sure there's much to see anyway. It would've been cool to eat there, as I've heard the food is really good, but oh well. Maybe next time.

I got back to Dublin around 10 (the flight's only about an hour) on a Sunday night, ready to rest and get back to another week of work. My only trips remaining in the summer are to Northern Ireland and London so I'm glad that I got the opportunity to travel back to the mainland one more time. Who knows when I'll be back over here again. And Amsterdam is actually a really cool city, even above the influence. There was also A LOT more to do there than what I was able to do in the short time I had and I would definitely go back if I had the opportunity. Here are some photos, most are credited to Zach Boven:

Canals


So many bikes


Red light district


APPLE CAKE


Enjoying our "breakfast" before the museum


Right by our hotel


Waiting for pancakes


AMAZING!


Cheese


In the canals with my favorite twins


Anne Frank House


Having fun taking our tourist pics


Bye bye Amsterdam